


Uragiri

by Kypros



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-01
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-07 04:50:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/744437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kypros/pseuds/Kypros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At twelve years old, Kakashi was there in the exact moment when the world stopped. And when Anko came back, he knew nature could be cruel too. Drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uragiri

Anko once told him that a moment is the most you could ever expect from perfection. Nothing more, nothing less. If you wanted anything more, you'd have to hit rock bottom, erase everything and build yourself up again. Because nature always destroyed something beautiful, she had told him. Things like that _always_ happened. 

(Secretly he had wondered if that meant nature would have to destroy Anko. It did, because then _it_ happened).

They are in the middle of dinner (Minato-sama’s treat!), with Obito noisily slurping noodles, salty miso broth dripping down his chin and Rin barely touching her sashimi when a messenger-nin appears to summon Minato to the Council.

“Orochimaru-sama is—,” His voice heaves with unadulterated heaviness, desperate and jarring—“ _missing_.” The last word comes out sharp and wheezy sounding, as if the man had just run a non-stop marathon to Ichiraku Ramen Bar in a matter of seconds.

Time stops. The paper lanterns, red and glowing, strung across the roadway, are the only things that seem to move, swaying easily in the night breeze. Kakashi looks up at his sensei then back to the messenger and wishes with uncanny feelings of lucrative longing that what the man has to say is all but a joke. But the man’s face is strange in a way that he knows that isn’t right; teeming with fear and trepidation, awaiting Minato-sensei—the Hokage—the one man who _knows what to do_ —to speak.

Time lapses into a laconic lull and outside the cover of Ichiraku’s colourful banners, people laugh and smile and shout, drunken patrons of Izanmi’s teahouse filtering out into the streets. They have no idea what has just occurred—what the nameless messenger whom Kakashi analyzes as a scared and senseless chunin, sixteen years of age—has just announced.  

There are no words in which to describe the moment of incalculable madness in which his sensei’s face twists in a horrible manner, unfiltered and unchecked.  His face drops and eyes turn hard like obsidian. The chopsticks Rin held gingerly in her fingers clatter senselessly to the countertop and Obito nearly drops his bowl of ramen, choking on the noodles.

Finally, Minato stands, and nods to the messenger.

“His apprentice,” the man adds hastily as an after-thought. “She’s missing too.”

And when Anko came back, three years later, Kakashi notes that she had been right. Nature had been right. Because nature always destroys something that is beautiful.


End file.
